When: Monday, November 7th,6:30-8:00pm (in place of our usually scheduled group)

What: Many of us have been pioneers creating and recreating Alternatives to Suicide groups since 2008. To speak our personal experiences with suicidal thoughts without the fear of force, coercion or the threat of being judged is at the base of these peer-to-peer groups but the values that keep these spaces powerful run much deeper.

Part of what has grown out of our work is the Charter for Alternatives to Suicide Mutual Support Groups, inspired by the charter for Hearing Voices Network groups. This charter has been informed by many in the community, but we want to keep growing!

In place of our group on Monday, November 7th, we wanted to take time to share the Charter and these values on how we come together in respectful curiosity. We invite folks from Western Mass (and beyond) - especially folks who’ve been involved with Alternatives to Suicide groups presently or in the past—to discuss how to more deeply live these values with each other and how we might make the Charter and groups more deeply reflect how we each feel seen, heard and supported by other folks too.

Included in our overall discussion on sharing deep, and sometimes painful, experiences, we intend to particularly talk about:

The importance of pronouns and accessibility for queer folk

The power of conversations based in the language of human experience versus conversations confined to clinical language; and

How we might honor each person's freedom to interpret experiences in any way while holding a healing space that does not tolerate hate speech on the lines of race, gender, sexuality and other experiences.

If you have any accessibility requests (on the basis of language, mobility or otherwise)